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Fun Jobs in the Diamond Industry

So you’ve just graduated college with an advanced degree in the horticultural customs of indigenous Iowans. Or maybe you hit it rich in the incipient days of the dot com boom, retired early and now are looking for a stimulating new activity to occupy your time. Your natural destination? Why a career in the culinary arts at McDonalds, of course. Good luck to you.

But wait! Have you ever considered jobs in the diamond industry? There are oodles of positions, located all around the world, looking for candidates just like you!

Here’s an alluring aggregation of all the diamond related career paths you just may find yourself exuberantly skipping down in the months to come.

Miner: Do you love dirt? Looks like this earthy position was made for you. See the world as you bore holes into sedimentary rock in Australia, Africa and…wait for it…Canada! Nothing can be more rewarding than burrowing into steep, dank mine shafts for weeks at a time, excavating mound after mound of craggy soil, until you finally uncover a pebble sized speck of actual rough diamond. Huzzah!

Bonus benefit: You sometimes find old, headless Barbie dolls in the dirt, which you are free to keep for yourself.

Cutter: Were you always cutting school? Do you enjoy getting hair cuts? Are you not cut out for many other jobs? Well, none of those things are relevant. Being a diamond cutter takes a natural predilection for incising stones comprised of the hardest material on the planet. It’s not an easy feat. The slightest mistake and -whoops- you’ve just ruined the stone and depreciated it by god knows how many thousands of dollars. Unlike a foray into Weight Watchers, here you are trying to accomplish “weight retention.” Ultimately, a career in cardio vascular surgery may be easier to attain.

Bonus benefit: If you do reach your dream of being an authentic cutter, you are legally allowed to carry Crocodile Dundee sized knives around with you.

Girdler: Much like the person who gets to lace up the girdle that your gramma wears, a diamond girdler truly must be committed to, and love, their job. The girdle is the infinitely thin strip that goes around round brilliant cut stones, connecting the crown to the pavilion, so precision must be your strongest suit. Not a good field for people with “the shakes.”

Bonus benefit: When telling people you are a Girdler, they may mistake you for the comic lovechild of The Riddler and Grimace.

Polisher: Have people always complimented you for being ‘oh so smooth’? Put your silky skills to work in the fast paced world of professional polishing. Required experience: 5 years in the shoeshine business, or a summer spent “waxing on, waxing off.” What the job actually entails is putting a diamond up to a wheel that spins around and smooths out the surface facets. What’s on the wheel? Other chunks of diamond! That’s right: it’s diamond-ception. (De facto, it’s a fine “diamond dust” that covers the wheel, but you get the idea.) Only diamond can wear diamond down to the glossy sheen we’ve come to know and love and, in some cases, obsess over like Gollum.

Bonus benefit: Polishers do not need a visa to vacation in Poland.

Brillianteer: Don’t know what this means? Guess what? Neither do the people employed in this field. You basically just make the diamond a little more ‘brilliant,’ which is a word British people use for when something is smashingly crackling. In all verisimilitude, a brillianteer is really a super specialist polisher who goes to work on larger sized diamonds and polishes them in an evanescent way to bring out their “brilliance” and “fire” (which is the symbolically immolated way that light refracts through a diamond and dances around the room, like an ecstatic fairy, drunk on mead).

Bonus benefit: All the brill cream you can stand.

Wholesaler: Do you have colossal piles of money blocking the entranceway to your helipad? Put them to good use: buy a bunch of loose diamonds and then sell them internationally to jewelers at a huge mark up. Violá. You’re now a wholesaler, the rock star of the diamond biz (a veritable Justin Guarini).

Bonus benefit: Being a Wholesaler is far preferable to being a Hole Seller, the person who is in charge of selling land after it has been mined completely dry of diamonds.

Jeweler: Are you good at crafts? Do you like working with your hands? Do you already have your very own Etsy account? Boom. A jeweler’s life is the life for you. Delicately placing diamonds into silver, gold and platinum mountings is definitely one of the most dazzling jobs in the industry.

Bonus benefit: Fool-hearty, Dense and Clueless men will approach you and ask “What engagement ring should I get??” and you are free to sell them the worst piece in your inventory for the highest price you can!

Marketer: You’ve seen “Mad Men,” right? This is just like that — except no tumblers of bourbon, excessive cigarette smoking, extramarital affairs or accompanying mod yet somber soundtrack. Just a lot of pictures of diamonds and phrases like “A Diamond is …a rock that lasts a really, really, really long time” (or slightly catchier).

Bonus benefit: At least you don’t work in the super market.

After Market Diamond Sales: Do you like helping people sell their old diamond jewelry for the absolute best price they can find, anywhere on the planet? Is your ideal career one that balances doing the right thing and aiding people in potentially difficult times while still working in the luxury field? Well, we’ve got stellar news for you. Just such a magical place does exist: Diamond Lighthouse. Find out what we really are all about (all jokes aside) here!

Bonus benefit: You get to live in your own diamond studded studio apartment, in an actual lighthouse.